


Evil Holiday Goblins

by Anonymous



Category: Knight & Rogue - Hilari Bell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Being Human (UK) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Christmas, Gen, M/M, Warlocks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2772152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Request: Fisk/Michael. Being Human fusion, roommate!AU with supernatural being!Fisk and warlock!Michael. Hurt!Michael with a bit of plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evil Holiday Goblins

“Bloody freezing,” Fisk muttered, as he made himself a cup of coffee from the table in the nurse’s break room. Not because he was going to drink the stuff, it tasted like tar and was probably a health hazard in it of itself, but it was dangerously hot, so he could curl around it for a minute or two on his break.

Someone laughed behind him. And Fisk, Fisk _knew_ that laugh. He very carefully did not drop his coffee, but did leave it on the table by the dispenser when he turned to face Jack. “You look… exceedingly average,” Fisk said, and sighed. “What are you doing here?”

Jack’s grin was more of a baring of teeth. “Looking for you. I have a job offer for you, Fisk. You’d be wise to take it.”

“I have a job,” said Fisk. “This is my job. Welcome to my place of work. You might’ve deduced that I work here, given that I’m standing here, in the break room where only nurses are allowed, in my scrubs. And, look, here’s my badge, in plain sight. And, by the way, _only nurses are allowed back here_.”

“I have a Health & Safety badge,” Jack shrugged.

Fisk brushed past him to go to the door, coffee forgotten now that his heart was thudding enough to send warm blood everywhere, in case he needed to flee. “Don’t you have carrion to eat? Lion cubs to kidnap for Scar?”

“Hyena jokes. Original.”

“Piss off, Jack. I have work to do. And I’m not interested in whatever job you’ve got.”

“Really? Because with the salary my employer pays, you could buy that dump where you live out from under your spider-whore landlady.”

Fisk spun around and glared. “Kara is higher up the food chain than _you_ , Jack, so you watch your mouth about her, or you’ll end up as _lunch_.”

“Now you’re acting like a predator,” smirked Jack. “Come on, Fisk, even if you don’t want the money – and don’t tell me that you don’t, I know how much you like to pad your savings account – you know you miss the work. It’s fun, and it’s interesting, and you’re surrounded by less prey. Unless you’ve gone soft?”

Jack divided the world into predators and prey based on relative ruthlessness. Fisk used to make it his daily goal to be counted among the predators, but now all he really wanted was to finish his rounds. Maybe Jack was right, and Fisk was getting soft. But that was sort of secondary.

“Working for someone else, begging me to come work with you again, maybe you’re the one who’s gone soft,” Fisk snapped. “Now get out of my hospital.”

Fisk caught the way Jack’s eyes gleamed red for a second, and then his old partner stepped even further into Fisk’s person space and slipped a business card into the pocket of his scrubs. “Let me know when you change your mind,” Jack said, and walked away.

He shook his head and got back to his rounds, only to stop when Dr. Foster – she was a korrigan who’d gotten Fisk this job, and introduced him to his dorky warlock roommate, who was madly in love with her for an embarrassingly long time – drew him aside. “Fisk, who was that?”

“Just an old partner,” said Fisk. “Don’t worry. He’s not harmless, but he won’t harm the hospital.”

“He should invest in coloured contacts if he’s going to be swanning around my hospital,” she fretted. “Mortals only have to worry about their lifetimes, I’ll be a laughingstock for centuries if humans find out about us in my hospital.” She sounded more concerned about her reputation than the hospital, but she’d get around to that concern later.

“I’ve got rounds,” Fisk said, and Dr. Foster made a noncommittal noise, so he took that as his cue to leave.

“Don’t forget, we’re having dinner tonight, Fisk!” she called after him.

-

-

Fisk came home, as he did most afternoons, to half of the things in the flat levitating several feet above the ground, and Michael passed out on the couch in a sprawl of limbs and spellbooks. Trouble, the fuzzy mutt Michael used as his familiar, was napping on top of him, but he thumped his tail in a wag and peered at Fisk with one eye as Fisk carefully collected floating teacups.

Chant was perched on the back of the couch, but Tipple was nowhere to be seen. “Where—ah,” said Fisk, spotting the tortoiseshell hovering near the ceiling, paws tucked up under herself. “You know, when I wake him up, that’s going to be a precarious position.”

Tipple plummeted down as if on cue, and Michael made a sleepy sound as he stirred. “Fisk?”

“Yep,” said Fisk. “Come on, sleepyhead, Rosa’s coming over for dinner, and you’re still wearing pyjamas.”

“What, no, Rosa’s not coming until the twentieth!” Michael said. Trouble whined when his human pillow sat up to blink at Fisk.

“If you had a mobile phone, you’d know that today is the twentieth. See, they have calendars and clocks built in, and—hey! Rude!” Fisk said, because Michael lobbed an actual pillow at his head. “Anyway, today _is_ the dinner with Rosa and Rudy. Did you find the spell you were looking for?” he added.

“No,” grumbled Michael, as he stood up and stretched. “I haven’t found a single spell that’ll stop Kallikantzaroi. The others—” by which he meant his coven, affectionately called the Troupe “—are putting wards up, but people are bound to find them and take them down, or be called out of their homes, or be killed in the streets. And since no-one believes in them, we can’t exactly warn people.”

“Right, so, the evil Christmas goblins are unstoppable,” Fisk said, nodding. He made a rather artful stack of teacups beside the sink as he spoke, and when Michael shrugged, and his pyjama shirt slipped off his shoulders. He looked exhausted.

Michael started to yawn, stopped himself, and said, “I’ll find a way.”

“You go shower. I’ll put a pot of water on to boil.” Fisk’s voice was firm, cutting off any attempts Michael might’ve otherwise made that Fisk didn’t have to help him cook.

Fisk was a pretty terrible cook on his own, but he liked to steal partially cooked spaghetti noodles and freshly chopped vegetables and perch on the kitchen counters to talk to Michael while Michael worked around him. For someone who hadn’t wanted a roommate in the first place, Fisk had found he actually enjoyed having people around. Not that you should really quote him on that, Michael was the exception rather than the rule.

Maybe it was Fisk’s genetic inclination towards being a bodyguard, but at some point in their living arrangement, Fisk had started making it his business to keep the altruistic warlock out of trouble. Which was easily job for twenty people, as evidenced by aforementioned Evil Unstoppable Christmas Goblins.

The water was only barely starting to warm when Michael came into the kitchen, looking a little more awake with his long hair a frazzled mess from being towel-dried. “Oh, you got the tomatoes out for me!” Michael said, sounding delighted. The knives start chopping the tomatoes on their own while Michael roasts garlic with fresh basil.

Fisk hummed in agreement. “So, these Kallikant—sorry, say it one more time for me?”

“Kallikantzaroi.”

“Okay, now three times fast,” Fisk said, and grinned when Michael brandished his spatula at Fisk. “All right, all right. So, the Kallikantzaroi, they’ll start cropping up tomorrow at sundown?”

“Yes, and we’ll be out there fighting them off. Somehow. When I figure out how to stop them.”

“Have you tried finding whoever summoned them?” said Fisk, as he snagged a chunk of tomato off the chopping board. “You forgot the onions and the mushrooms, by the way.”

“They’re in the fridge, I chopped them earlier,” Michael said. “Wait, _what_?”

“What?”

“You can _summon_ them?”

“That’s what my dad told me. That some warlocks in Greece summoned ‘em every year.”

Michael groaned. “None of the lore even mentioned that!”

“Everyone knows the best lore never gets written down. Stop looking like that, you can tell Rudy when he gets here. Seriously, this is why you need to ask me before you go through all my books, it’ll save us time. My dad gave me the primer on all things fairy when I was a kid.”

“I’ve been talking about these things for weeks!”

“Nine days, actually, and I thought you knew.”

Michael fetched the onions and mushrooms as the tomato cubes floated over to the pan of roasted spices. “No, obviously I _didn’t_ know that—anyway. Thank you, Fisk. You are, as ever, a wealth of information.”

“Damn right,” Fisk said. “Sorry I was late.”

“Don’t worry about it. Do you think you can handle dumping spaghetti into a pot of boiling water without burning it this time?”

Fisk pinched Michael’s arm when he joined the warlock at the stove. Michael retaliated by butting his shoulder against Fisk’s. “You need to shower now, Fisk. Unless you’re planning to have dinner in your scrubs?”

“Right,” said Fisk. “Right, yeah, I’ll go do that.”

-

-

Rosamund and Rudy were already there by the time Fisk found a pair of clean trousers, and Rosamund was attacking Michael’s hair with a comb. “Does Fisk let you go out in public like this?” she said, in a very motherly tone of scolding.

“He wears that long coat of his everywhere, Rosa, his hair’s hardly going to make people think he’s sane,” Fisk said.

“I like my coat,” said Michael, as he helped Rosamund out of hers. “It’s like a cloak, and it has a very practical set of enchantments on it. Some of which _you_ suggested, Fisk, so I don’t want to hear about how much you hate the coat you mend regularly.”

“Michael, practical?” Rudy said.

Fisk snorted and took Rudy’s coat to hang it up. “I should hope so, since you’re entrusting him with the protection of the city.”

“Only a fraction of the city,” said Rudy. “There are nine of us.”

“Yeah, nearly a million people for each of you. And, as it so happens, Michael managed to figure out the solution to your Kallikantzaroi problem.”

Rudy looked momentarily disgruntled by the news that Michael had figured it out first – there had been a rivalry between the two men for Rosamund’s love, a few years earlier, and the resentment still lingered – before surprise took over. “Wait, seriously? How?”

“Fisk helped,” said Michael. His voice was warm as he looked at Fisk, who shrugged it off. “Apparently the Kallikantzaroi must be summoned,” he explained.

Rosamund pouted at them. “No work talk over dinner, boys, those are the rules,” she said. “We’ll go over the list of known magic-users after we eat whatever delicious meal Michael has prepared for us this time.”

“Spaghetti, actually!” Michael said.

“With your homemade sauce?”

“Is there any other way to make spaghetti?”

-

-

“All right, so, we can work under the assumption that no-one in the Troupe did this,” said Rudy.

Fisk made a sound that sounded dubious of this plan, but he was ignored, since it was common enough knowledge that he didn’t trust or like teaming up with people. Only Michael knew Fisk felt that way not out of the stereotypical dislike spriggans have for other creatures, but because of a failed partnership. And only Fisk knew that his former partner was back in town and offering him a job.

Michael pointed at one of the names on the list. “Lianna Dalton can be disregarded too. She has the power, but not the ability.”

“Right, she only finds things,” said Fisk. “But you’re leaving out a few key points. Power, ability, yeah, but also motive and style. For instance, Willy Dawkins? He’s got nothing to gain from this, and it doesn’t have nearly enough planning to be him. He’s smart.”

“Who _would_ unleash utter chaos on the city for two weeks?” Rosamund asked, as she peered at the list.

“Lionel Burke comes to mind,” Rudy said.

“Lionel Burke couldn’t light a candle with his magic,” said Michael. “He’s odious, but mostly harmless. And though he may have hired someone else to do it for him, he won’t be of much use.”

Fisk jabbed the page. “Yorick Thrope. He might do this, as a way to set himself up to rescue a pretty girl from certain death.”

“No, there were enough sexual harassment claims against him that we had to start tracking his magical signature to keep him from coercing girls with magic,” said Rudy.

“Put Ben Worthington on our list of suspects,” said Fisk. “He warned you lot about the Kallikantzaroi in the first place. He might’ve been trying to shift blame away from himself in case you discovered that there was a summoning involved, and I’m rather worried this whole thing has been a scheme to lure the Troupe out to harm you.”

After nearly an hour of discussion, the list had been whittled down to seventeen people.

“Fisk,” Rosamund said, staring at the list. “You’re going to have the day off tomorrow.”

He nodded.

“We should be able to narrow it further with a few interviews,” said Michael. “We’ll go talk to everyone here. We should have addresses for all of them, and if we don’t, I’ll talk to Lianna. We’ll start out at dawn, to be sure we’re done by the time darkness falls.”

-

-

“Who’s first on our list?” Fisk asked.

Michael checked it over. “Worthington is in the Caribbean for the winter, so I guess… Atherton Roseman.”

“Wasn’t there a bloke in Firefly named Atherton?”

“Yeah, he’s the one who fought Mal in that sword fight in episode three.”

Fisk frowned. “Episode four,” he said.

“Are you counting the two-part episode ‘Serenity’ as two episodes?”

“No, it goes ‘Serenity’, then something else, then something else, and then ‘Shindig’.”

“The second episode is ‘The Train Job’! That was the most important episode, Fisk, it set up Mal’s moral code—”

“’Objects In Space’ is the most important episode, what are you talking about?”

The argument carried them through the Tube ride to where Atherton Roseman lived, and they were both in excellent moods by the time they made the short walk to his building. Fisk pressed the intercom button next to the label _Roseman_.

“Hello?” he said.

“Did you read the ‘no soliciting’ sign?” Roseman replied, voice brittle.

“Ah, yes, we did. We aren’t solicitors, Mr. Roseman. This is Michael Sevenson. I think you know who we represent?”

The pause stretched long enough that Fisk turned to give Michael a significant look – and then Roseman buzzed them in.

“Okay, remember, play it close to the chest,” said Fisk. “If you don’t want to lie, just let me do the talking. You just put your magical feelers out, all right?”

“I know what I’m doing, Fisk,” Michael retorted, as they got into the lift.

“Sure you do,” said Fisk. He groaned when the lift played cheery holiday music as it moved. “They actually found a way to make lifts worse,” he grumbled.

Michael frowned. “What’s with you and Christmas, anyway?”

“You mean besides a bunch of religious nutters trying to claim it as their own special holiday even though several different major religions have holidays around this time? Look, I see the appeal for everyone else, but I don’t go in for this sentimental lark, so I don’t really feel the need to celebrate it.”

“Fair enough,” said Michael.

They approached Roseman’s door with growing trepidation, but the man who answered looked entirely average – an overweight, well-dressed man with slightly flushed cheeks – and smiled at them politely. “You can come in, if you’d like.”

Fisk crossed into the room, half-expecting a ward against non-humans to keep him out, but the real surprise came when Michael crossed the threshold and immediately stiffened. “It’s him,” Michael said to Fisk, then addressed Roseman. “Why’d you do it?”

“Summon the Kallikantzaroi? I just needed a distraction. I hadn’t anticipated their appearance being traced back to me, though.”

“Can you interrupt the summons?” Fisk asked Michael, even as he edged between the two warlocks.

Roseman sighed. “He already has. The poor fool’s all but depleted his magic.”

Fisk slipped a hand into his coat pocket and tapped a few keys. “He’s planning to kill us both to cover it up,” he said to Michael, just loud enough for the speakers to pick up.

“Clever little creature,” said Roseman. “He guards you like a hoard of stolen treasure, Mr. Sevenson. I wonder why that is?”

“Took me too long to train a flatmate properly.”

“He’s stalling for something,” Michael said.

Fisk had been so focused on stalling himself he hadn’t noticed Roseman doing the same. “Shit,” he said. He quickly rattled off Roseman’s address, and Roseman lashed out at him with magic that glowed orange. Michael tackled Fisk out of the way and went down hard, blood already seeping out of shallow cuts in his side.

“Who did you call?” snarled Roseman. “Answer me, dammit, or I’ll kill your little treasure!”

Fisk lost it.

When he lunged at Roseman, he was twice his normal size, looming huge over the man. Roseman’s magic shifted, and before Fisk could think of a way to stop him, it enveloped him and Fisk was looming too-tall over nothing but empty air.

He returned to human size, fumbling in his pocket for his mobile. “Rose, Michael’s been hurt, he’s bleeding, come quickly!”

“I’m already on my way,” she said, and he let the device clatter to the ground as he went to Michael’s side. Michael was poking at the pool of blood forming under him like he didn’t quite understand what the red liquid was or why it was everywhere. Delirium induced by hypovolemic shock, Fisk’s nursing school education supplied.

Fisk quickly yanked his coat off to get at his shirt, tearing the buttons open to get to the clean cotton. It turned red fast when he pressed it against Michael’s side – the spell, whatever it was, seemed to be making Michael react like a hemophiliac, but Michael’s own magic would start to fight it off if he could just stop the bleeding.

“Did we stop the Kallikantzaroi?” Michael asked.

Fisk nodded. “Yeah, mate, we stopped them. Now stay awake so we can celebrate, okay?”

“I dunno what sorta spell he hit me with, but wow,” said Michael, blinking up at the ceiling. “That wasn’t very nice of him.”

“No, he wasn’t very nice at all, which is why it’s important you don’t die on me. We gotta stop that guy, right? Michael?” Fisk shook Michael gently, only getting a bleary series of blinks in reply. “Dammit, Michael, stay alive. C’mon, focus,” he said urgently.

“It’s Christmas, Fisk,” said Michael, and then his stupid smile vanished as his face went slack in unconsciousness.

Fisk couldn’t move, unable to risk Michael losing more blood, so he just knelt beside Michael until Rosamund rushed up. It might’ve been hours later, but given the faint rise and fall of Michael’s chest and the coagulation rate of his blood (did magic affect the coagulation rate of blood?), it wasn’t very long.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Rosamund said. “Fisk, I brought—I’ll hook him up to the IV, you just stitch him up, all right?”

“You can’t heal him?” Fisk asked.

“No, he’ll be fine on his own. Come _on_ , Fisk!”

“I don’t want him to be fine on his own. I want him to be fine right now. You’re a Korrigan, heal him!”

“I can only heal people if they ask me to,” said Rosamund. She was lifting his arm, wiping the crook of his elbow with antiseptic, positioning the needle, and Fisk stared at her.

“That is the most useless power in the universe.”

“Oh, because turning into a bigger version of yourself is so much better,” she snapped.

The banter cleared his mind enough to mobilise him. He cleaned Michael’s cuts with the ease of practice while Rosamund hooked him up to a bag of plasma, and he set to work with a needle and thread, counting as he went. “Five… six…”

By the time he was done (sixty four stitches in total), the rest of the Troupe had arrived and were cleaning up in stunned silence, turning the place from a crime scene full of violence against one of their own and back into a spotless flat. Even Gloria seemed subdued, only deliberately stomping on Rosamund’s toes as she passed once.

“Let’s get him home,” Callista murmured, as she coaxed Fisk to his feet.

“He’s going to be fine,” said Fisk. And it was true – Michael was strong, and he’d gotten faster medical care than anyone else, unless they were mugged on the steps of a hospital – but his hands still shook the whole way home.

-

-

“You’re awake,” Fisk murmured, pushing Michael’s hair out of his face. “Took you long enough,” he added, more briskly, and stood up.

Michael grabbed at Fisk’s wrist. “Thank you.”

“Ugh, don’t thank me, let’s just say you’ll owe me one. Lie still, I’ll bring you tea and help you sit up. If you open those stitches, I may kill you myself.”

“You’re the best roommate in the world, Fisk.”

Fisk scoffed at that, but there was a smile on his face as he made them both cups of tea. “You’ve been out nearly thirty-six hours. Rosa says she’ll heal you if you just say the word, but I told her you’d say you’d—”

“Rather heal the human way,” they finished in unison. “You know me so well.”

“Well enough to know how you take your tea,” Fisk said.

"Really, Fisk,” Michael said, taking the mug of tea. “I can't thank you enough. Not just for saving me, not just for looking after me, but also for not saying I told you so yet even though I've been awake for two whole minutes."

"I'm warming up to a really _spectacular_ I told you so."

Michael rolled his eyes and then their gazes caught. Fisk wasn’t sure who started the slow lean in, but Michael reached up and tilted Fisk’s chin upwards while Fisk tangled his free hand in Michael’s wild hair to tug him down. Kissing Michael wasn’t earth-shattering. It was a natural progression, something as necessary as breathing.

“I love you,” Michael said, when they broke apart.

Fisk grinned at him. “I know. Now, drink your tea.”

Because of course neither of them had spilt their tea. Michael looked sulky as he sipped at his, though, and Fisk kissed the top of his head when he went to call Rosamund and tell her Michael was fine. “After this, we’ll see what sort of loophole we can find in the ‘no rigorous activity’ rule for your stitches,” he promised.

-

-

Jack’s business card fell out of Fisk’s scrubs when Fisk dumped his and Michael’s clothes in the laundry hamper in the corner of Fisk’s room.

“What’s that?” Michael asked, craning his head up off the pillows.

“An old friend wants me to work with him on something… dubious.”

“An old friend? Really?”

“Yes, _really_ ,” said Fisk, and then paused. “Depends on your definition of friend. He may be an enemy, I’m not sure. Either way, it’s not good.”

Michael didn’t look particularly concerned. “We’ll deal with it after the holidays.”

“Yeah? Is that your plan for whoever summoned the Kallikantzaroi too?” Fisk asked.

“It is, in fact.”

“It is a miracle you’re still alive,” Fisk told him, even as he crawled back into bed to start looking up places that were still selling Christmas trees less than two days before Christmas on his phone. “All sorts of terrible things could happen if we take the holidays off all the time. Maybe Roseman will summon evil Valentine’s Day goblins next, you never know.”

“We’ll handle it together,” Michael said. He couldn’t shrug, but it was in his voice.

“Right, I’ll tell the Troupe that our plans for possible evil Valentine’s Day goblins are ‘we’ll handle it’. Solid work.”

Michael rolled his eyes and reached over to interlock their fingers. “Evil holiday goblins don’t stand a chance.”

-

\- Epilogue -

Michael got back from a meeting with the Troupe that night and stopped dead just inside the door. The entire flat smelled like cedar and cinnamon, and greenery was wrapped around the banister of the staircase, hung over doorways, standing in a beautiful silver vase on the table… And Kara and Fisk were hanging tinsel on an actual, real Christmas tree, not the plastic sort you buy in a box at Tesco. Their landlady smiled at him, bright and cheery, as Fisk made sure the tinsel was spaced evenly apart.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think this is the best Christmas I’ve ever had,” said Michael. “You two are amazing.”

“Oh, this was all Fisk,” Kara laughed. “I did make you two gifts, of course, but Fisk came up with all of this.”

Michael beamed at Fisk, who shrugged. “I like the smell of pine, you like Christmas, it seemed a fair compromise. And… well, the Troupe is coming over tomorrow night for a Christmas party, and Rosamund will play hostess, and you’ll cook, and I will drink a truly outrageous amount of eggnog, and make out with you under the mistletoe, and then we’ll have a proper Christmas morning.”

He was flushing, embarrassed, and Michael pulled him into a hug.

“We’re skipping Easter,” Fisk said.

“That sounds like a deal.”


End file.
